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Imagetool command line interface issue ?

scottb613

scottb613

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Hi Folks,

Can someone riddle me this ? I'm trying to script some texture conversions - the first example doesn't produce any output... The second example does... The only real difference is that I'm trying to produce DDS files from a source DXT3 BMP in the first example... The same source is used in both examples...

Doesn't Work
/Home/n63503/msfs_ai/bin/imagetool.exe -dds -batch -nomip -nogui -o output.dds testfile.bmp

Works
/Home/n63503/msfs_ai/bin/imagetool.exe -batch -nomip -nogui -o output.bmp testfile.bmp

Thanks...

Regards,
Scott
 
Last edited:
tgibson

tgibson

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You need to specify how you want the output file processed, if you change the output format. This works for me:

/Home/n63503/msfs_ai/bin/imagetool.exe -dxt5 -dds -batch -nomip -nogui -o output.dds testfile.bmp

Hope this helps,
 
D

Deleted member 1281

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Try this (copying imagetool to local dir first). Also make sure you have the 2007 or later imagetool. This is assuming you want to edit the output file further.

imagetool -nogui -32 -dds -nomip testfile_dxt3.bmp
 
Heretic

Heretic

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This is what I use to convert to DDS:

Code: 
imagetool -batch -nogui -nomip -dxt5 -dds -nodither -r *.bmp
 
scottb613

scottb613

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502
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unitedstates
Hi Folks,

Thanks for the great answers - I’ll try these and see if I can get something to work... I didn’t try adding compression but I think I tried -24...

Funny - I started rooting around and I found another tool - Nvidia’s DDS command line tool... This tool can’t seem to open the DXT3 but it could open a vanilla BMP...

As a kludge - I used “Imagetool” to open the DXT3 file save it as a BMP - then used “nvdxt” to open the BMP and save it as a DDS... LOL - it works but is very slow and not efficient... I’m probably adding more loss with each conversion as well...

Does imagetool kind of grab your screen and mess it up when it’s running with the -nogui option ? It blanks out my screen so I can’t see my script running and I can’t get control again until it’s finished processing my files...

Thanks again...

Regards,
Scott
 
Heretic

Heretic

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scottb613

scottb613

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502
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unitedstates
Hi Bjoern,

Thanks - I'll definitely take a look there as well - it could help me out...

I'm working on AI... Just started with UTL and much of the stock AI needs improvement or modification... It was a tad tedious to manually start replacing and upgrading models - manually updating textures to DDS - and then manually editing the aircraft.cfg to reflect those changes... I'm using many textures from FS9 as well... I'm not a programmer by any means but I do know my way around in UNIX - so - years ago I came across this fantastic free open source program called "Cygwin"... It effectively emulates a complete UNIX shell (I'm using BASH) on a Windows platform (hence my slashes are going the "wong way") - LOL - it's actually better than UNIX for my needs as I get the best of both worlds - a fully operational UNIX shell that has access to everything in Windows - one slick piece of kit if you ask me... I just create a simple load sheet file with all the particulars of the AI Aircraft and the script grabs all the pieces parts - performs the conversions - and assembles them in a folder ready to be dropped in v4...

Regards,
Scott
 
Heretic

Heretic

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Two of my three computers dual-boot Arch. ;)

Batch and Bash aren't too different, but since the latter is still maintained, it features some nifty built-in functions that aren't available in Batch.
 
tgibson

tgibson

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AFAIK, a DDS file for FS is always compressed, and thus you must define a compression algorithm. -24 doesn't do that.
 
Last edited:
Heretic

Heretic

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DDS is just a file type. Compression can be anything from none at all (32 bit) to any DXT mode.
 
tgibson

tgibson

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I tried it with -32 and I got a valid DDS file that loads fine into FSX, thanks for the info. Again, he needs to assign a formatting command before the DDS file will be created.
 
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